Moisture on the brain

So I have spent WAY too much time the past two days researching humidifiers. The HVAC guys Wagner got estimates from recommended two possible units: a Honeywell True STEAM humidifier, or a Trane evaporative unit. Thanks to my time on the Piano Forum, I knew a little about basic types of humidifiers (pianos need very precise humidity control for a number of reasons), and I had a dim memory of some brands receiving greater praise than others. So I told Wagner I wanted to study the choices before making a decision.

Talk about a headache. While there are plenty of reviews of small portable humdifiers, there are very few objective reviews comparing different whole-house humidifiers. There are plenty of websites discussing individual brands, but they're all biased (published by the company selling the brand), and they all make their own particular brand sound like the be-all and end-all of humidifiers. Rather more troubling was the fact that I could find next to nothing about Trane humidifiers.

On the other hand, the True STEAM was getting rave reviews from a number of corners, including various HVAC and do-it-yourself forums. Apparently it is very effective because it heats water directly into steam, and thus converts essentially 100% of the water that flows through into humidity, as opposed to the evaporative type of humidifiers, which run water through a pad and thus as much as 2/3 of the water just goes straight down the drain. (This type in turn is infinitely better than the old-fashioned drum type of humidifier, which rotates a spinning pad on a drum through a standing pool of water and is thus prone to all sorts of bacteria and mold problems. Whatever you do, don't buy one of those types.)

The snag is that the True STEAM is a fairly new unit, introduced only in the past year or so, and thus with not much of a track record for longevity or reliability, and it also cost twice as much as the Trane. I also could find only one post talking about the cost of running the unit, and it mentioned that it raised their electricity bill by about $40 a month. That adds up to a lot over time.

But with the internet remaining scarily mute on the Trane, I didn't know if I wanted to spring for it. On the other hand, the Piano Forum (and other places which presumably knew more about humidifiers) also raved about the Aprilaire or Desert Spring units (both evaporative types). Of course neither of those were offered by the HVAC people we were having doing the furnace.

Then I noticed buried in some forum a post which asserted that Trane was the same as Aprilaire. Huh. I called the Aprilaire people and spoke to a VERY nice and helpful young man who was reluctant to confirm that they were identical but did confirm that Aprilaire's parent company also manufactures the Trane unit. I pressed him a bit on the issue, and he said that the main units were probably the same and that the main difference would be in how they were packaged (e.g., the humidistat supplied with it, etc.)

At that point I was leaning toward the Trane/Aprilaire, when I mentioned we were getting a high efficiency gas furnace for the addition. In that case, he said, we strongly recommend that you connect the humidifier to a hot water line. Because the furnace is so efficient, it doesn't run as much, and therefore the humidifier isn't operating enough. Using the hot water line would help it humidify better during the shorter time it was running. This, I knew, could be a big snag, because Wagner had only (thus far) run a cold water line over to the furnace room.

Uh-oh.

So then I called the HVAC people and asked them about it. I spoke with the technician who is installing our furnace, and I spoke with the owner of the company himself. They both said that while both humidifiers were nice, they preferred the True STEAM. I mentioned the operating cost issue, and the owner said that he had installed three of the units in his own house and did not notice a big change in his electric bill. I didn't know what to make of that. He wouldn't lie to me (would he?), but he definitely had a vested interest in selling me the more expensive unit.

Grapple grapple. So then I decided to go to the horse's mouth and call Honeywell directly and ask them how much their units cost to run. And here is where I get all irritated. Any Honeywell execs reading this, you should know this: Your customer service sucks. First, your website is hard to navigate, with some pages slow to load or resulting in the dreaded Error 404 (page not found) message. Worse, there is no customer service phone number posted under your contact information. There's just an email form where you can submit a question, but when I tried to do that and clicked "send," nothing happened.

Finally, I found a pdf brochure for the True STEAM linked through the site, and way at the bottom of the brochure in tiny 4 pt. font was a customer phone number. Heh heh. I dialed it, rubbing my hands and cackling evilly. But first I had to navigate three separate menus before I even got to the recorded voice that told me that my wait time "might exceed ten minutes." Then I was treated to a scratchy, poor quality audio recording of an instrumental version of "You Light Up My Life." I'm sorry, but the Honeywell person who designed that hold tape should be the first casualty of the economic downturn.

Finally, finally, I talk to a real person... who, judging by his accent, was sitting in a large call center in India. Before I can even start my question, he asks me for my telephone number, name, zip code, and shoe size. Just joking about that last one, but I finally got all snitty and asked "Why do you need to know all that?" "We want to ensure our call quality," was his reply.

Finally I got to ask my question: What is the typical operating cost of the True STEAM system? "Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am," he replied, "I can't discuss that. I can only talk about the various features of our products." This stumped me momentarily until I came up with a clever rejoinder: "Hmmm.... well, it occurs to me that the typical operating cost of your unit IS in fact a feature of your product."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but it is impossible to predict how much it will cost to run. Say that I am in Texas. ['fat chance of that,' I think to myself] The cost of electricity and the weather conditions will make the operating cost of the True STEAM unit very different than what you might pay."

I begged him to just give me a ballpark range... was it a dollar or two a month? Forty dollars like the sole mention of it that I found? Or 100 dollars a month? He stubbornly refused to budge, and I ended the call much disgruntled.

So, at this point I'm leaning toward the True STEAM unit, simply because I do find the literature compelling and believe the people who say that it is more effective. I was finally swayed by something the HVAC company guy said, which is that moist air will migrate toward dry air, so the new humidifier unit should also help out with the rest of the house... and our current humidifiers do not do a great job of keeping the humidity high enough in the winter. The final straw was when he casually asked, "Say, didn't Mr. Wagner say you have a piano you were concerned about? This True STEAM would be better protection for it."

I am fiercely protective about my piano, so even if it costs more to install and run, I guess I'll go for the better unit. Perhaps growing weary of my changing my mind every couple of hours, Wagner told me to "think it over tonight" and let him know for sure tomorrow morning.